The Eastern Cities:
The Eastern Cities are a collection of some dozen cities clustered
north and south of Priascialla along the
slightly curved coast of the eastern seaboard. They are varied vastly,
with some being very civilized, and some being little better than
frontiers. Valrona is one of the most urbane
and sophisticated of these. Priascialla
is their capital.

The cities are generally arranged in a crescent shape along the very
fertile coast; the Wilds make a C shape
along their western edge, as if embracing them. A hinterland of forest
and scrubland separates the Wilds from humanity. The land is very nearly
flat, with some rolling hills as one travels away from the cities. This
happy accident of geography has allowed the cities to feed themselves
and grow to prodigious size over time.

There are twelve duchies administered by the
Nobles of the Twelve, and each of the eighteen
cities falls into those duchies.

A Few Words About PowerScialla itself prevents most
power sources from operating. Power
exists only in limited amounts in
Priascialla itself, about fifty miles
out from the city in all directions. Abruptly, as if crossing a line,
engines stop working, guns no longer discharge, and gadgets go dead.
Researchers are still studying the reasons for this. Due to the
Perimeter, airships can only land in the Priascialla
spaceport. This gives Scialla a unique strength that
it uses to full advantage.

So about three days' travel in any direction has power, and
outside of that, no power operates. This means that about four
of the eighteen city-states enjoy the modern benefits; the rest
operate like medieval fiefdoms. In game terms, power means
electricity and current; the power comes from the city
itself, and most people know the Palace is involved somehow.
Nobody but the highest nobility, however, know just now.
The current has never once failed, though outlets can sometimes
go out and need replacing; there are no power lines, as these
are buried far beneath the streets.

Property Ownership and You
The primary thing to remember about property is this:

All land is owned by some Noble somewhere.

Everybody ingame must live somewhere--in other words, must have an
actual ingame place where they sleep and store their stuff. Most people
will rent a place or get one provided by an employer, which is a standard
perk for a lot of different jobs (bodyguard, shop assistant, church servant,
most artistic endeavors like acting, singing, etc). Others, who get more
money, will buy land.

The Kiassan Empire is a feudal society, which means that no land can
be utterly considered to be any commoner's. Ultimately, all the land
belongs to the Empress and her immediate family; she lets the Grand Dukes
beneath her administer vast swathes of it, and they in turn let
Dukes, Counts and Barons administer sub-sections of it. These other
nobles allow lords and ladies to do the nitty-gritty work, and these
lords and ladies are the ones
who "sell" parcels of land to people.

Generally speaking, the person who buys the land is really buying a license
to administer it in the name of the lord of the area. As long as he behaves
and pays his fees and taxes, he is protected by several laws--his license
can't just be revoked for no reason, for example. If the landowner misses
his taxes or gets in major trouble (treason would be the main situation here),
the noble above him can revoke his license. Such revocations always go through
Low Court or High Court depending on the rank of the landowner; the landowner
may hire a lawyer at his own cost or represent himself against the noble.

Even a Noble of the Twelve can have his or
her land taken away by the Imperial throne. Nobody outright owns land
and has total, uncontested control over it; the grant allowing the use
of it always follows a chain of command.

The feudal nature of Sciallan land ownership makes it both easier
and harder to get land ingame. The easy way is to do such a big favor
for someone that you'll get it as a grant. The hard way is to raise the
exorbitant amount of funds needed to sweet-talk the Noble into granting
the land.

It is a good idea to hire a lawyer for the actual purchase itself, to make sure the
negotiations are beneficial. Among other things, purchased land grants aren't always
perpetual, but usually must be in leases that are renewed, usually in 30 year increments.
A gift usually reverts to the granting lord's control after the recipient's death, and
unless a legal contract dictates otherwise, that may happen with a purchased grant as
well--hence most purchases are made in a couple's name or in a business' name.

In towns, property is leased, not purchased. Lease terms usually run 30 years,
after which the lease may be renewed at a much lesser rate. If the lease purchaser
dies, most towns allow the deceased leasee's family or business to maintain the
payments on the property with approval from the city's council (the consideration
usually involves the family's or business' financial ability, the reputation and
standing of the family/business, and whether or not someone else of higher rank
has decided to ask for the property).

In ingame practical mechanics terms, there are real estate offices in
Valrona with lists of apartments and townhouses for lease. Once a place
is purchased, a tax document appears in the living room to be paid every
ingame year; the lease document must be paid every 3 ingame months (about
every 3 weeks RL). Players may have as many keys as they want, but if they
don't keep up with the taxes, the lease owner may just re-key the place
on them.

The most northeast of all the Eastern Cities, Cicilium is mainly a
fishing and marine processing city-state. Pearls come from here, as
well as dried and smoked fish. Cicilium residents are sometimes teased
for their backwards ways, but the city still remains one of the larger.
There is a vocational-technical school here and all of the standard amenities.
Cicilium is fortunate enough to escape the snow and ice that
plague more inland cities during the winters, thanks to its proximity to the sea.
Their university's Quintzel team, the Cicilium Smokies, is
fairly highly rated.

Cicilium is pretty far from anything civilized, but it retains a stiff
dignity not seen in the warmer southern climes. It is also the closest to
a democracy of just about all of the Eastern Cities, with even Baron Michael
just called "Lord Michael" by most of the residents. Nobility can expect
little more than "lord" or "ladyship," which are applied to all landed nobility,
or "lady/dame" or "sir" in the case of knights or unlanded nobility. Though
exceedingly polite, people in Cicilium have important work to do surviving,
and the rest of the Empire needs to get out of their way.

It's a little hard
for someone from up there to adjust to life in Valrona, thanks to their
lack of education in what to call who. They also tend to know their own
heraldry but little else. Don't mistake this attitude for belligerence; though
certainly there are boorish jerks from Cicilium, it's more a mindset of
feeling it's more than a bit foolish to get hung up over whether to call a Duke
"Your Grace" or "Your Excellency." They'll do it if they must and most of them
know that if they travel, they'll have to do it or end up in jail, but they'd
rather just show respect by working hard and being polite. Baron Michael
has made it perfectly clear that he won't tolerate them being rude if they're
visiting elsewhere.

One of the Eastern Cities. Abdera
is the next in line past Cicilium. Abdera is
more inland, and thus closer to the mountains in the north of
Tergaea. It makes its main income
mining and smelting. Fine metals and ores come from here, and several
varieties of beryl gemstones like sapphires.

The Duchy of Abdera is controlled by House
Tarikaden, with a solid base of military control over the austere area.
Abdera boasts some fine training grounds, with a huge swathe of its
mined-out caverns hosting some remarkable training exercises for the
Tarikaden-controlled Outside Army.

Up in the mountains, the duchy's master smelters and smiths create all
sorts of treasures, including rosesteel,
a very expensive rose-tinted steel alloy favored by the nobility of the
Empire. The smiths do not like visitors, and even the Duke himself hesitates
to bother them overmuch.

The Twin Gorges Military Academy, based outside Abdera, hosts a
Quintzel team, the Twin Gorges Outsiders.
One probably does not need to say that they are terrifying.

One of the Eastern Cities.
Hevalta is inland, some distance southwest of
Abdera, located near the forests that blanket
Scialla. Due to its good location,
it has a strong logging interest. Fine woods
are gotten from here, processed and shipped throughout the Kiassan Empire. Though there are other cities famed
for their fine lumber, such as Behistun, Hevalta
aims for the finest woods rather than bulk woods as Behistun
does.

Hevalta is technically part of the Duchy of Abdera and therefore
under the control of House Tarikaden.

One of the Eastern Cities, a
distance west of Hevalta. It is a large city
that focuses on military supply, with mass production facilities that
import metals and woods from all over and then exports goods to
Priascialla. Gatera is a smaller city,
but has all the standard amenities. Its vocational school concentrates
mainly on logging.

Gatera is the seat of the Duchy of Gatera, and thus administered by
House Moondancer. Its area extends
for some distance out to the north and west.

One of the Eastern Cities.
Located southeast of Priascialla, Apec
Juste has the good luck to be located along the coast. It is a fishing
town, but also cultivates in artificial stone tanks a kind of shellfish
that is grown for one of its glands, which when squeezed produces an
intense range of dyes depending on the type of shellfish--deep blues,
purples, and reds. Its chemists create some amazing dyes. Definitely
one of the older cities on the eastern seaboard.

Apec Juste is one of the larger cities in the Duchy of Hurst Fen,
administered by House Montedevris.

One of the Eastern Cities. Hurst
Fen is not far northeast of Priascialla.
Hurst Fen is on the coast, its people tending to be jacks of all trades.
Its main emphasis is on farming, though its people pride themselves on
their self-sufficiency. Just about anybody from Hurst Fen can sew, fish,
can and smoke food, work leather, and of course farm. Hurst Fen exports a
great deal of foodstuffs to Priascialla.

One of the Eastern Cities.
Closest to Priascialla, this industrial
city lies about halfway in and halfway out of the
Perimeter. It is meant almost
entirely for production, but does boast a small college and other
support for a city. Its residents are known for being rather stringent
and conservative, as well as fairly religious. It is located a few
days' travel north of Priascialla, but more
importantly just a few days east of Sarnow, and battles
between it and Sarnow for contracts for luxury
goods are frequent as it jockeys for increased influence. There have been
minor skirmishes along the two duchies' shared border in the last few years.

Eretea is one of the production centers for
Macadam cheese, owing
to its extensive pasturelands that are good for cattle. Its meatpacking
plants are near-legendary in general. This is supremely useful farm
country, and since it's half inside the Perimeter, the most modern
methods possible of extracting food from the land are used wherever
humanly possible. Not a single inch of land is ignored or unused.
Wastefulness is considered the worst sin a person can commit around
Eretea.

From the Perimeter south to Priascialla, the land is choked with
factories and production centers. The people live in tall rabbit warren-like
apartment complexes, with few living anywhere near the poverty line, much
less above it. They are little more than serfs, unable to move due to lack
of funds, but unable to thrive due to wages and an economy built around
consumption. The lords and ladies who govern the area live on the top
floors of the skyscrapers, throwing lavish parties and doing the
tough administrative work required to keep the machines running.
Those few lucky serfs who get out move east of the city to the ever-expanding
suburbs, where housing is more expansive but less expensive and where
the kids can run around in the grass to play.

Eretea's land covers a large swathe of the Eastern Seaboard, but
only a little of it is within the Perimeter. The rest of its land
is rolling farmlands that supply the factories to its south. A range
of hills forms its natural border with Gatera
and the wide Yellow River with Apec Juste.

Eretea is one of the larger cities in the Duchy of Priascialla,
and administered by House Stardancer.
It is the main supplier of agricultural products to the city of
Priascialla.

One of the Eastern Cities, Sarnow
is densely populated and definitely a production city. It actually
exports finished goods west, outside the realm of the Eastern Cities,
into the many villages that make up Without.
Sarnow has an urbane industrial attitude that other cities look down on
to some extent, but it prides itself on having a strong economy. There
are two colleges here, the College of the Arts of Sarnow, and Eastern
Technical. The Arts school has a heated rivalry with the University of Valrona.

Because the city of Sarnow is powered, it itself is imminently safe from
invasion. The duchies around it tend to keep their borders very
well defended, and do not encroach beyond the
Perimeter. Sarnow is famous
for its pollution and its excellent military. Ironically, the duchy
is divided: the city of Valrona is also part of its lands, but
the Duchy of Duremont, owned by Val Taquar's
House Grenville, divides it
clean in the middle. Through a painful series of treaties, this
situation has become entrenched over time, but not even the treaties
prevent skirmishes. Sarnow is well aware of its very delicate
situation and is always on the lookout for ways to recover its
lost territory, but it has to be done subtly and no opportunity has
come up yet.

The Patriarch of House Barrister,
Hector Barrister, is the ruler of
the Sarnow Duchy. His wife, Lady Kathryn,
is younger than he is and thus likely to assume the mantle of Matriarch
when her husband dies. Most of the main Barrister holdings are
concentrated here, but there are, obviously, notable others,
such as the Welleslan holdings in Valrona.

The capital of both the planet Scialla and of the entire
Kiassan Empire, Priascialla is the
hub of all activity and a sort of Shangri-La to those who live far away.
If you're very very good when you die, you go to Priascialla. See
here for an extensive writeup about this
glorious city.

The Duchy of Priascialla extends for quite a ways outside the
main city in an oval that extends up the coastline a short distance
to encompass Eretea and smaller towns. The
duchy is administered by House
Stardancer.

One of the Eastern Cities. It's a
little southwest of Priascialla, inland.
It concentrates on agriculture and food export, primarily the grains
that grow so well in the temperate zone there. It's one of the older
cities, founded not long after
Priascialla, and it shows in the city's
unusual architecture. It does offer all the standard amenities,
including a vocational school, Machegai Agricultural and Technical.

Machegai is part of the Duchy of Duremont and under the jurisdiction
of House Grenville. The duchy also
includes Val Taqar.

Machegai is right on the edge of the duchy's borders with
the Duchy of Sarnow, and as one might guess,
it occasionally changes hands every so often when a decisive battle
is fought. The residents there consider are sharply divided between
those who consider themselves loyal to the Moondancer family, and
those who consider themselves loyal to Grenville. It's a pretty tense
place, and visitors are advised to stay out of the tension by not
wearing any emblems of either family or duchy. Even having a
particular accent can get someone into trouble there.

Every few months or so, a bunch of drunks from Machegai go over
the border into Sarnow to the border town there of Illira to cause a
ruckus. Illira, which is in the same kind of situation, does the
same thing to Machegai. It gives both towns a certain reputation for
recklessness. It's not a good idea to mention that both towns have
exactly the same architecture and last names.

One of the Eastern Cities. Razec
Abinion has some intriguing architecture. Located well inland along the
eastern coast of Tergaea, it's
theorized that this was one of the earlier cities to be founded.
Definitely the decidedly archaic buildings, some little more than
functional ruins, have intrigued archaeologists for some time. Razec
Abinion is a scholarly city devoted to stoneworking, with quarries nearby
providing marble of various colors and granite. It was once a rich source
of triamandine, the metal-strong mineral that
makes up such stunning Imperial treasures as the White Palace of Priascialla. The people here tend to be
rather insular and conservative, preferring to stay among their
cathedrals and fine houses than to mix and mingle with the rest of the
Empire.

House Andillion controls this
duchy, with their usually-studious Nobles surprising everybody with
their sudden flair for strategy and logistics. Though there are every
so often faddish and frenetic searches for some new rumored run of
triamandine among the people there, House Andillion remains above it all,
carefully researching new claims and either pursuing them with careful
reserve or else debunking them after minimal expenditure of time and
resources.

The Duchy of Razec Abinion extends for a ways into the western part
of Tergaea. Most of the towns in it
are rather small, with the exception of Razec Abinion itself.

Treasure hunters abound in the area, not all of them from Razec Abinion.
Mining is huge money out there, and all the miners hope desperately that they
will be the next one to find a motherlode of gold or better yet triamandine.
Some parts of the duchy are in bad shape thanks to the digging.

One of the Eastern Cities. Famous
for silk farms that supply the couterier houses, and the flower gardens
that provide distilled essences to the most exclusive perfumers of the
Empire. The damask roses found in Val Taqar are known to be the best in
the entire Empire. Val Taqar is a decidedly luxury-oriented city, but more
production-oriented than is Valrona. It has
quite a rivalry with Valrona, but it's a more friendly rivalry than that
pursued by Eretea.

The Duchy of Val Taqar is administered by
House Grenville and extends in a
somewhat-oval shape. It includes Machegai as
well to the northeast.

The perfumeries here are very busy, with most residents involved in the
industry in one way or another. The most famous perfume here is the
famous rose perfume Aria in Damask,
selling for 400-600d a quarter-ounce bottle and favored by
Empress Kira Stardancer I herself. Another
perfume is the infamous and notorious Ylessia,
in its scarlet-red glass bottle shaped like a poppy flower. The formulae for
these perfumes are worth killing over, and corporate espionage is a thriving
cottage industry around this area as companies vie for the rights and recipes
for this or that new scent sensation.

Glassblowers also enjoy quite a bit of regard here, since their creations
house the perfumes that enrich the city so well. The family that has the monopoly
on creating the beautiful gold-glass bottles used by the producers of Aria in Damask
is originally from Pontecala but settled here a few
centuries ago. The family, House Turindil, was ennobled for their contribution
to the world, and have lived the life of prestige and luxury since as petty Nobles.

One other social aspect to Val Taqar must be mentioned: it, along with
Valrona and Pontecala, is famous for its beautiful courtesans, those professional
mistresses who enliven parties and form the hub of culture and the arts.
These women are far from mere prostitutes; they are the grease on the axles of
society, bringing art and great leaders together. Though huge dramas can erupt
through jealousies involving them, for the most part they are just part of the
cultural landscape. Val Taqar famously taxes its courtesans specifically and
uses the proceeds to pave streets and build churches. In return, the courtesans
get the right to march in parade during the city's annual Feast of Saint Denis,
the city's patron saint. The festival around that feast day lasts a week
and is considered by proper Haranites to be rather licentious and salacious.

Val Taqar's main university, Atramis University, is a close rival
with Valrona for both academic and sports-related honors. Atramis is
famous not only for its engineering and mathematics departments, but
also for its literature and poetry programs. Its music school is slanted
specifically toward courtesans, who need to know how to play at least
a few instruments.

The Duchy of Duremont was created out of whole cloth after a series of
battles with its neighbors, particularly Sarnow. Consequently, it enjoys
its place as the dead center of trade. There's absolutely no way to get to
Priascialla without going through Duremont unless someone wants to go way
out of the way around, which causes its own problems. So the duchy taxes
tariffs, and a lot of its income comes from trade going through the province.
Valrona can get around it for the most part by employing boats to sail north
along the coast, but everybody who can't gets it in the shorts. Worse, the
tariffs are supported by the Empress, who gets a cut of them, so as long as
she supports the tariffs, nobody can say much about it unless they can come
up with an army big enough to fight Flameholdans in battlesuits. If she were
to withdraw that support, likely things would change dramatically.

Valrona is one of the most urbane of the Eastern Cities. It's
the summer home of the Empress Kira,
and also to the University of
Valrona, one of the most renowned Sciallan places of learning.
Though possessing a reputation for being urbane, sophisticated,
and dissolute, this decadent city is about as luxurious as you
can get without power.

Valrona is also part of the
Duchy of Sarnow, administered by
House Barrister. Ironically,
its longtime rival, Val Taqar, cuts the
duchy clean in half, separating Valrona entirely from its duchy seat.
Only a series of extensive treaties, along with stern admonition from
the Imperial Throne, has kept those borders stable.

Valrona is not powered and is far from the Perimeter, but it
enjoys a large level of maritime trade with the rest of the coast.
Society in the city is a mixture of the cultured and the profane,
with courtesans mixing with the upper echelons of society in
sparkling parties. College students hailing from all over the
Kiassan Empire can be found here in this urbane, sophisticated
melting pot.

One of the Eastern Cities. Well
south of Valrona, along the coast of the
continent Tergaea, Saethbridge is located in
pleasant rolling countryside of hills and forests. It is known for its
amazing herds of long-haired goats, making a cashmere wool that is much
in demand throughout the Empire.

The Duchy of Saethbridge is owned by
House Saethborne. It is rather
expansive in terms of area, but aside from its agricultural possibilities,
there isn't much there in the way of strategic holdings. The main reason
Saethbridge wasn't incorporated long ago into some other duchy is that
it makes an excellent buffer between the more ambitious duchies to the
northeast, particularly Duremont (Val Taqar),
and the more leisurely ones to the south, particularly
Pontecala. To this end, the southern duchies
ally very closely with Saethbridge; there are all sorts of treaties
of mutual protection signed between them all.

The Duchy is just west of Valrona's territory, past some thick forests.
A valley forms beautiful country out there, but it's of little strategic
significance. It borders Razec Abinion to the north and Behistun to the
south. The Wilds borders it to the west as part of the crescent-shaped
arc of its edge.

Razec Abinion is not known for its forward-facing fashion sense, but instead
for its gracious, unhurried style of living. The people are well-treated for
the most part, and the Nobles are tall, willowy, long-haired, and artistic.
The men are excellent hunters and hawkers, while the ladies are beautiful
even by Noble standards. The ladies are settled in scintillating arranged
marriages that help advance the family's fortunes in other duchies, while
the men advance the family by accepting high-ranking Church commissions
and taking positions administering the Empire's needs in Priascialla and
afar.

One of the Eastern Cities. Behistun
is located well south of Valrona, south of Saethbridge as well. Behistun is a riverside
city, walled and well-defended, with an economy based on timberwrighting
and river traffic. Barges ply the wide Kaneel River,
fishing and transporting goods. The town has all the general amenities,
though it's regarded as somewhat backward by the rest of the cities.

The Duchy of Behistun is administered by
House Tybiris, which explains why it's
so good with defense. Though small, it is known to be more than capable
of keeping itself safe and secure.

Kandar is one of the Eastern Cities
of Scialla. It is located southwest of
Behistun, inland along some rather harsh rocky
scrublands. Kandar has a splendid college, as well as an excellent mining
and smelting complex. It exports its goods along the Kaneel River all over the Eastern Cities and beyond, to
even the cities Without. The people of Kandar can
be somewhat more tan and lean than people elsewhere, and can be insular.

The Duchy of Kandar is one of the larger duchies in the Eastern Cities.
It extends for some distance out to the south and west of Tergaea.

One of the Eastern Cities, located
well south of Priascialla. Named for the
huge square-ish mound near the city, Mount Avenbury is a walled city
whose main economy is based around logging, mining, and stoneworking. A
granite quarry is located not far away, though environmentalists are
starting to get alarmed about the mining techniques that are polluting
the river running near the city. The mound itself is grassed over and
largely used for pasturing sheep. All too near, the
Wilds loom, so residents have to be careful how they gather Scialla's
bounty.

The logging industry has given rise to a cottage industry in turn of
herbalism and specialty farming. A fledgling perfumery, for example, produces
the now-popular scent Everfall, which is
supposed to smell "like the Wilds itself."

Mount Avenbury is technically part of the Duchy of
Pontecala, though it retains considerable autonomy.

One of the Eastern Cities, a bit
southeast of Behistun along the coast.
Pontecala is a decadent city famous for its glassware. Both mass
production facilities and fine arts galleries exist here. The city is
partially marshland, dredged and constantly reinforced for defense.
It's well-known that Pontecala is not easily taken; its many seaports
and sea-channels are difficult to traverse without experience and maps,
and the denizens here are well capable of changing the channels to foil
invaders.

The Duchy of Pontecala is the southernmost of the duchies of
Scialla, comprising both the main city Pontecala and the smaller
one of Mount Avenbury to the northwest.

The people of Pontecala are famous (or infamous, depending on
who one talks to) for their mercantile skills. They have a shady
reputation for piracy as well, but very seldom are their swift ships
ever witnessed doing anything illegal. In a way that's a fortunate
thing, because if such a thing were witnessed, lawkeepers might find
it difficult to capture one of Pontecala's famous Sea Spears.

For centuries, the glassworkers here were the undisputed kings of
the craft. Now that once-secret formulae are out in the world, that's
far less often the case, but even so, the glass galleries in Pontecala
are a hot tourist attraction. Very few visitors return home without some
small vase or jewelry piece made of spun-crystal glass using masterwork
techniques.

The ruling family of Pontecala is House
Riacold, a decadent, party-loving family with rumored ties to piracy.
Duke Torad Alat is the patriarch of the
house and the ruler of the duchy itself.